Hold the Light (4 page)

Nathaniel shuttered and tears welled up in his eyes. He gazed down at the dirt path beneath them and then fixed on the ring again.

"Nathaniel, I think everyone is dead," Mural stated coldly, scolding himself for believing this dream his younger brother had for even a second. There's no more room for fantasy, no more time for the fancies of youth; survival is the only thing left.

"I'm scared. I don't understand any of this. I know this is more than a dream. Why would mother appear to me? Why?"

"I don't know. What I do know is that it was
just
a dream."

"No, I think mother was trying to tell me something. I think she's trying to help somehow. I think she came down from heaven as an angel to warn us."

"Goddamnit, Nathaniel, they're dead! They're all dead! Everyone we love is dead and we're the only ones left! You had a nightmare, plain and simple. We have to worry about what's real and what's in the now. About what's here."

"That is what I'm doing. It's here."

Mural stewed angrily as they walked and Nathaniel gazed at the ring in his palm, flipping it over itself hundreds of times as they strolled into Boston at nightfall.

Chapter 6

The brothers saw little of each other over the course of the war, but wrote often. Mural wrote of his promotions within the Continentals and his appetite for vengeance while Nathaniel complained of his continual dreams and headaches. On the occasion that their regiments would meet, the brothers spent their leave catching up.

Nathaniel had grown to an average build, seemingly stunted by his overly delicate nerves that wanted nothing to do with growth. Mural, on the other hand, kept on growing. On one of their meetings, Mural had passed the height of Nathaniel's horse and he still wasn't out of his teens. And with each meeting over a half decade's time, Nathaniel watched with sensitive dismay, as his brother grew infected. He watched the disease of blood thirst grow strong within Mural. It had grown so large and so obvious that Nathaniel began to fear it in his dreams, unable to escape it.

The second to last time they ever met was to decipher the fate of the printing press, mere months before the war ended. The last leg of the war had turned Mural into an assassin and Nathaniel into a wreck. Neither slept much, out of fear of murder. Mural's life had death at his doorstep every time he was defenseless and when Nathaniel slept, his dreams assaulted him with seemingly tangible terror.

"I need people I can trust Nathaniel. Why won't you join me? I need someone who can actually
see
the red of the redcoats. It's become all gray to me," Mural said as the brothers sat on a hill looking out onto the Atlantic Ocean.

"There's enough death in my dreams Mural, I don't need to add anymore. I want this all to be over. The killing has to stop - there is too much blood on my hands already. I can't wash it off anymore. I want to settle down and get back to the press. Uncle is getting too old to run it."

"I've been thinking about that too, and since you will not join me, I couldn't think of a better person to run it than you, brother," Mural said with a smirk.

"Thank you. It does seem the logical thing to do. Well, you said in your letter that there was something else you wanted to tell me. Something big."

"Yes ...now, don't get mad because I was out for a long time, but before I left, around six months ago ...well anyway ...you have a sister now."

Nathaniel's brain reeled. He pictured their little sister Becca, swathed in her Sundays, sweet and perfect in her unstained dress. Splotches of red spread across the virginal white cloth and Nathaniel cringed. His anger permeated him. The gall that Mural had, thinking anyone could replace Becca somehow. Nathaniel's blood burned. Mural held up his left hand to show off his wedding band.

"Wow ...I don't know what to say. Uh ...congratulations. Who is she?"

Nathaniel began to calm, his heartbeat and breathing slowed back down to normal.

"Remember Veronica?"

"Yes," Nathaniel said groaning with disapproval, "the one who got around."

"Don't you speak ill of her!" Mural bellowed and jumped to his feet, fists shaking in the air. The rage that Nathaniel feared reared its ugly head, it was always just a matter of time, but Mural realized his outburst and quelled for his brothers sake.

"That's all I remember of her, I'm sorry."

A long and tense salt breeze of silence breezed between them for what felt like a lifetime. The brothers sat silently until a question blurted out from Nathaniel that he had wanted to ask for years.

"What has happened to you Mural? You're so violent now. I worry about you. All you do is hate."

Mural groaned like he had been expecting a lecture from a parent.

"How about you? You think you see mother everywhere. Get over it, she's dead!"

Another, more familiar silence hung between them. Years of anger and love filled their eyes. Neither needed to argue any further; both knew everything behind the other's words.

"Listen, Mural, I'm coming back here to Boston and running the press and am going to try and live a normal life. I want you in it no matter what. I know you think that I'm pretentious with my 'high and mighty talk,' but I do not mean it that way. I just want you safe and happy. You are my family. I'll always do what is best for the family. To save rather than destroy. We've seen enough destruction."

Mural stewed with fury but he knew his brother was right. Nathaniel always knew what to say to make everything better. He was always planning for the long term. Mural wished he had that kind of foresight. The present was all he had counted on for so long; it was all he could ever count on. It was the only time he felt alive.

"I will come back on my leave and start my new life here, with my wife and brother. The war can wait. I will spend December here."

The two wrapped in a hug and agreed. Two things they hadn't done in ages.

"I'll see you in three months then," Nathaniel said as they parted.

That day was the most of Mural's past that he ever wanted to revisit. That day marked the beginning of the end. Ever since that day, his every attempt to make pleasure, his every hope, had turned into pain. Everything he thought wonderful turned out to be terrible. It was all or nothing, Mural learned that from the war, so he chose all. But nothing chose him.

It killed him to even think about the days after that one, so many good intentions and nothing but bad to show for it. Mural blocked it all out from his memory and remembered the war instead. Everything was simpler then. It was pure and simple survival. Once the fighting stopped things got complicated again. Their country was free and Mural paid for that freedom heavily. Mural wasn't a farmer or a banker; he was a killer and knew it. Once the war was over and there were no more enemies, Mural adopted a completely new purpose, one that was the problem and the solution.

It began for Mural when he embraced his color-blindness. His eyes and heart, at some point during the revolution, both saw in coarse black and white with shades of gray. He often wondered if it was his values, or even his soul, filtered out the good and the bad, coming to rest on the oh-so gentle and forgiving gray. But as time passed Mural's morals, the lines he drew in the sand, disappeared like they did in the war, while his new purpose harmonized with the black and white he saw in.

And shortly after the war ended he began his familiar flirtation with violence again. It was all he knew. That violence would ring in his skull and cry out for nourishment. At times he would try to recall when these cries began, but it was like trying to remember the first time his stomach cried out for food.

Mural's new purpose involved him sitting in the taverns that lined the streets of Boston with a pint and a plan. Women that hobbled out onto the cobblestone streets were the ones to fall into his web. Out on those dirty paths covered with lust and pain, he watched through the pub's window as whispers within his head told him which one to choose. Everyone within these taverns would laugh and chatter on as Mural clutched his head in agony, and the night only seemed to amplify these sounds in his head.

Walking the streets in the day, the screams were lessened by sunlight it seemed and left him alone, as if to force him in a nocturnal life. He would lug his nearly seven foot tall frame along the streets, doggedly refusing to give in and become a creature of the night. But as soon as the sun set, nothing else but these women whispered in his mind. They enlightened him on the plights of the entire city. He would have thought all was right with the world after the revolution - after all the hard fought bloody battles, but these whispers told him that one fight was over and another was beginning.

This city used to be so great, bustling with life, with carriages drawing ladies and gentlemen to the theater. Great ships lingered in the bay with sails shimmering in the moonlight and perfect clothes draped like curtains in the shops. But not anymore. Mural's beautiful city was going to Hell and he knew he had to fix it. No one would ruin his Boston. The air blew freshly free in this city of great heritage. War's stench still resonated on the people's minds and they lacked the stomachs to another war so soon. But not Mural. Corruption would not return, not in his lifetime.

His hands shook with anger at the thought of Boston's degradation. He slammed his pint down and foam sloshed over and onto his hand, angry that not one single woman in the tavern caused a peep in his head this night. Even as prostitutes stood in the shadows enticing with their bodies, Mural still heard no whispers to persuade him to kill. These women, no matter how indecent, had one thing in common - they were all liars, corrupting God's grace through terrible abuses of their marital vows. Mural saw them as they slobbered over random men, using their vile words to take their wicked impulses upstairs or down to the alley. They would meet, heavy with lust, touching every inch of bare skin as they grinded against each other. Their sex stink filled the air. Once these hags drank her fill of lust, she would send him away; crinkle him up and throw him in the dirty street, praying the water would wash him down the sewers and out of her mind. Then, she would run home before her husband grew suspicious.

Her wedding ring would appear like a magic trick from her hiding spot, most likely in her shoe, gleaming in all gold's twinkle before it slipped onto her soiled ring finger. With a spring in her step and engorged with the feeling that life just can't get any better and sex stink, she rehearsed her lies and planned her next night full of infidelity. And Mural would be ready to see that they would not go unpunished. Once was enough for him to go through such similar treacheries, and no man, no man, should have to suffer like he had.

Mural shuffled his feet ready to leave the pub when the cry he was waiting for sounded. His pint tipped over on the table again, spilling across his favorite smooth table as he pushed passed dozens of drunks towards the door. Most of the swaying drunkards shuffled away as he lumbered out the door, they had grown used to his antics, but the inattentive and unaware would kindly receive a hefty shove out of his path.

Another shrill scream pierced Mural's head and thrust him into the doorway with a thud that shook the windows. His vengeance had ruled these streets for a couple years now, but she, this very one, had to be the last. Not by Mural's choice, but by fate's choice. If he had a say, this retribution would go on ceaselessly. He would sell his soul to be plucked from the grave after God called him to His kingdom to continue his crusade. Mural knew how to go about his duty without being caught and that filled him with the necessary arrogance to need to go on forever. He had spread his killings over a span of time and had changed the appearance of his motives, to create the question in the authority's minds that there were multiple killers with similar objectives. Mural was careful to never create the same scene twice. One attack would appear out of jealousy, one like an accident and another like a ritual, and so on and so on until he ran out of ideas. And then he'd flip back kill as he did right off. With each attack he'd pick the scenario and act it out to music in his house during the day. Reading the note sheets on his harpsichord, he would weave out his act in preparation of that evening. After he weaved his masterpiece together and it felt harmonious, he would kill and leave no other conclusions to be drawn other than what he chose to leave. He had a job to do and no man would stop him.

Mural made his way out of the tavern and trailed this unlucky woman by mere footsteps, watching her stumble off towards her home, as he fingered his butcher knife in the back of his trousers. The handle would tell him how he would pounce. He hadn't done a ritualistic killing in some time and planned a particularly gruesome end for this woman, for she seemed more evil than the others before her. Horrid whispers bled from her presence and a hush of faithlessness fixed in his mind. The handle of his knife grew damp with sweat as they strolled down the street several paces apart.

Mural was so close he could smell her sex and laden perfume. The stink was thick and leapt over and coated his skin. He swore it began to seep into his pores. He had to end her soon. Mural reached out to run his stubby fingers through her hair but before he touched her, wisps of white fog flowed out from her as if they were strands of hair in the wind. This overpowering mist wound around Mural in a cocoon of bellows that forced him into retreat, keeping the knife fastened under his belt. Mural gagged and ducked into an alleyway. The woman turned to investigate but found an empty moonlit street.

Mural covered his mouth with his sleeve to mute his gags. He could see her look about for someone and once she faced his direction, he covered his eyes. If he ever saw her face, ever saw any of the women he stalked faces, he would lose the whispers in his head. The noises would disappear like they never were there, and no matter how hard he tried, the whispers would never return and he'd have to move on to another. That taught him that his purpose was strictly business, nothing personal, just cleaning Boston of its adulterer plague, and there was nothing more personal than a face. These betraying women had to remain as another face in the mob. A surprise attack for both the predator and the prey. The only thing Mural wanted to see was a cold dead face. If that was all he would see, it would appear that she was never really alive to begin with.